Freezing in NH

Gas at $4 a gallon is doing what hordes of Greenpeace supporters never could – killing the SUV. 

I was reading two articles recently about the rising price of oil and the fallout.  Of course there are a zillion, I’m not saying these two articles are particularly special.  Anyway.  Part of what’s interesting to me is hearing ordinary folks express some relatively well thought out opinions.  I do hear some “oil execs are rolling in money and starting their stoves with hundred dollar bills” but by and large I’m hearing people grasp that the issue has a number of causes and they just happened to come together right now.  Anyway, enough about that, on to the environment!

For more than two decades, Ford’s F-series pickup trucks have been the most popular line of vehicles in the country, selling more every year than any sedan, station wagon or S.U.V., foreign or domestic. But F-series sales have dropped more than 30 percent since last spring.

Last month, according to the new sales numbers released on Tuesday, the Toyota Corolla and Camry and the Honda Civic and Accord all surged past the F-series. It was the first month since December 1992 that a car — not a truck — was the country’s top-selling vehicle. The world doesn’t seem to have come to an end as a result.

I think this is a good thing, not necessarily families struggling, but the cutting back on unecessary driving, carpooling, bunching errands together, etc.

Ford has slashed production of its F-series pickup trucks, an American best seller for 20 years. Meanwhile, Nissan unveiled a $115 million new plant outside Tokyo designed to build lithium-ion fuel cells to power a new generation of battery cars.

 

I’d like to see a battery-only car in the US.  I’m not sure they’re practical at this point, but I would like to see how well they sell.  Generating plants are more efficient if they operate at a steady state, so charging cars at night would balance out daytime electricity use.

This spring, America hit a historic point. With average gas prices per gallon edging toward $4, America’s notoriously profligate ways started to change fast. Americans are driving less, using mass transit more, buying fewer gas guzzlers, indeed shopping less wantonly in general, and lowering their previously unshakable confidence as consumers. Suddenly, Americans are acting differently; if not exactly like Swedes, then not quite like themselves, either. It’s a shift that could change the world.

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